Europe's online source of news, data & analysis for professionals involved in packaged media and new delivery technologies
Spending on movies and TV shows in the home US entertainment market grew 1% in 2013, the second straight year of increase after declining at a 3% compound annual rate from the peak in 2004 through 2011... Read more...
Last year, French DVD and Blu-ray disc sales tumbled 16.7% to €929.1 million compared to 2012, according to data just released by Centre national de la Cinématographie and market research ... Read more...
For the second straight year in 2013 total consumer spending on home entertainment rose nearly one percent to $18.2 billion, according to the latest figures released by trade body DEG: The Digital Entertainment... Read more...
CES 2014 looks like the Year of 4K TVs - bigger (and smaller) displays at a falling price. What does not make much headlines is where the 4K content will come from to feed this (blind?) ultra high-definition... Read more...
Working with acclaimed singer, songwriter and photographer Julian Lennon and award-winning filmmaker Dick Carruthers (Oasis, Led Zeppelin, The Killers, Aerosmith), aeCreate has released its first major... Read more...
Consumers' insatiable appetite for localised filmed and TV entertainment has led to enormous challenges for producers and distributors alike to deliver huge volumes of content. STUART GREEN, CEO of ZOO... Read more...
Figures published by the British Video Association show that in 2013 consumer expenditure on video entertainment grew from £2,245 billion1 to £2,256 billion, driven by a 40.2% rise in spending... Read more...
In a wide-ranging interview, STEFAN BOCK, Managing Director of msm-Studios and Pure Audio Blu-ray pioneer, shares his belief in a demand for high-resolution audio. He calls for a consumer-friendly standard... Read more...
In their just-released annual report Media, Technology & Telecoms outlook for 2014, UK market research firm YouGov came up with somewhat encouraging data regarding UltraViolet's prospect for next... Read more...
UltraViolet, the cloud-based content delivery platform, was officially launched in Germany, Austria and Switzerland on 3 December with the release of Sony's The Smurfs 2, the first Blu-ray disc... Read more...
Leading movie server supplier Kaleidescape's Cinema One has been named a 2014 CES Innovations Design and Engineering Awards Honoree in the Home Audio/Video Components category for "its ability to deliver... Read more...
The internet continues to disrupt the world of video and television, and its impact is now permeating all corners of the value chain. Viewers are watching video and TV on a growing range of devices. Content... Read more...
The TV displays industry in Europe is in a state of flux with manufacturers desperately seeking ways in which to arrest the decline in unit sales and stimulate demand. DAVID WATKINS, Research Consultant... Read more...
A ground-breaking initiative led by the new Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) to target websites providing unauthorised access to copyrighted content has shown an immediate global impact... Read more...
In the US, it has become all too common to see unruly Black Friday shoppers fighting over discounted merchandise and doorbusters. A Fort Worth, Texas, Walmart supermarket illustrated the mayhem that took... Read more...
The rapid take-up of digital film and TV among people of all ages is creating a growing need for copyright education, according to speakers at the Industry Trust's Annual General Meeting in London last... Read more...
Back to business!
Even though our website activities were on the back burner for over a year while we reshaped our operations, professionals from nearly 50 countries have kept logging in to tap into fifteen years of archives that uniquely chronicle the birth, the life, but not yet the death, of packaged media.
Though our service brief has been including coverage of new content delivery channels for several years, there is still enough activity on the DVD and Blu-ray Disc front – globally – on which to focus our reporting energy, especially as 4K UHD seems to be gathering pace.
While our company, Globalcom Ltd, remains based in the UK, we are running the website afresh from South Korea! Always looking for new challenges and a desire to share widely the knowledge gained, I took up a faculty position at Hannam University’s Linton School of Global Business (in Daejeon) where I teach globalization and communication technology courses.
... Read More...
TECHNICOLOR has posted its results for the full year 2016. Group revenues increased by 34.8% at constant currency, reflecting the change in scale of Connected Home and Entertainment Services. The two segments combined recorded revenue growth of 48.2% year-on-year at constant rate resulting from the contribution of the acquisitions completed in 2015 and double digit organic growth in Production Services activities.
VODAFONE SPAIN is launching a new 4K TV service with 5 TV channels (10 by year end ) and VoD content for subscribers with convergent packages, like Vodafone One. The five new channels are Odisea 4K, Festival 4K, FunBox UHD, Insight TV and Slow Channel – and one 4K transmission of the best football match of La Liga every week. The company will be the first in the country to offer 4K VoD content with 850 titles including films, TV series and documentaries.
APPLE will make its first forays into original content in the “next few months”, according to Eddy Cue, the company’s SVP of internet software and services. Speaking at the Code Media conference in California, Cue revealed that Carpool Karaoke and Planet Of The Apps will become available “in most countries in the world” on Apple TV. Mac and iOS devices as part of Apple Music, the company’s subscription music offering.
MPEG LA ANNOUNCED that several patent owners in MPEG LA’s AVC Patent Portfolio License have filed patent enforcement actions in the Landgericht Düsseldorf, Germany, against both Huawei Technologies Deutschland GmbH and ZTE Deutschland GmbH for infringing patents essential to the AVC/H.264 (MPEG-4 Part 10) digital video coding standard used in mobile devices and other products. According to the complaints, Huawei and ZTE offer mobile phone products in Germany, which use patent-protected AVC methods without licenses with the individual patent holders or a portfolio license that includes these patents offered by MPEG LA. The suits seek monetary damages and injunctions.
DELUXE is to close its UK restoration operation at the end of March with the potential loss of 12 jobs.Recent projects worked on include the nine surviving silent Alfred Hitchcock films for the BFI. In 2015, the department won the Best Archive Restoration award at the 2015 Focal International Awards for its work on Camera Obscura: The Walerian Borowczyk Collection for Arrow Films. The division was formed in 2011 through the merger of Deluxe Digital London (DDL) and Deluxe 142’s restoration operations following Deluxe’s acquisition of Ascent Media. Deluxe said it would maintain its restoration facilities in Madrid, Spain and Los Angeles, US.
MOBILE and desktop video consumption are running virtually neck-and-neck, with 86% of consumers saying they watch video on smartphones and other mobile devices, compared to 70% on desktops, AOL found in a fresh study that tracked usage trends across seven global regions. Additionally, 57% of consumers watch videos on a mobile phone every day, compared to 58% on desktops and laptops.
